Crisis management

Children require food, shelter, clothing, and an adult to ensure their safety to survive.

When compared to the requirements to thrive, survival looks minimalist at best, and negligent in most lights. To foster an environment which will allow them to flourish the adults and specifically the parents of these children must provide more than the minimum. Parents must provide, love, loyalty, creative outlets, structure, love, understanding, discipline, and a slew of other situational actions and emotions in an attempt to ensure their children do not end up emotionally malnourished, drains on society, or even violent criminals. This is not to say there are not exceptions to these guidelines, there are always exceptions to every rule.

The tricky part of this whole parenting thing is finding the perfect balance based on individual values and desired outcomes. As soon as we figure out the right balance and start to think "This parenting thing isn't that bad, we should have another one..." we are hit with a left hook when our second child is nothing like the first. Parenting styles that work on the first kid may not work with the second, or vice verse.

There is no return policy on children. Generally they are your responsibility for the next eighteen years or so. Contrary to what my mother said, you  can't just take them back to Kmart for a refund. So how do we move forward in our parenting adventure? Simply put, we trudge on until we figure it out.

One method would be to look to our parents for inspiration...then again, my  mom did threaten to return me to Kmart. If we are improve our children's prospects for the future, maybe a look at parents we don't want to be like is also warranted. The parents in the store who let their children run rampant through the aisles and play hide and go seek in the clothes racks seem to be a good candidate for this category. At the same time, I remember those being some pretty fun hide and seek games.

If an undamaged child is something we strive for, maybe we should model ourselves after the rich and famous parents. They should be able to give their children every thing they need to ensure success. Still, it seems there are a higher number of celebrity children who are in therapy, or into drugs, or have some form of severe emotional damage. Maybe giving our children everything isn't the best option.

I guess, in the end, we can only rely on our wits while parenting. In my experience parenting is equal parts hope, dread, love, and terror. We hope our actions are sufficient to give our children every ounce of life skills they deserve, we dread the inevitability of our own humanity in that we will do something that has the potential to destroy their fragile senses of reality. We love them with all that we have, and we are filled with the terror that they won't know that we still love them when they are getting a lecture on why it is not acceptable to color on the walls.

Parenting is a dangerous game. At any moment catastrophe could strike and our children could be ruined. At any moment we could scar them irreparably, and spend the rest of our lives paying therapy bills. On the other hand, I had a less than traditional childhood, and I turned out relatively normal. In fact, I believe that it is the minor emotional scars, the subtle character flaws and the ability to survive any sort of catastrophe my mother threw at me that made me who I am.